4 October 2012

A piece I've kind of always wanted to do - completely based on synthesized sounds, yet openly soulful and more importantly, intimate.

After resolving some past issues through a dream (as it happens with me once in a while), this is exactly what came out of it literally as I got out of bed that very morning. The original recording date was 6th of August and I thought I would continue in the same vein soon enough to produce an album in a couple of months but obviously that didn't happen, so I felt it would be a pity to leave it behind.

Those Rhodes chords and a few other predominantly "retro" keys came straight from the faithful old Yamaha DX7 IID, played by hand, whilst the other had been delivered by a combination of VSTs in Ableton Live.

The video is obviously there just to keep something spinning on YouTube, not much to see (though I did think before choosing what to put).

Originally based around the idea of me being an instrumental backup to Lebdi's vocals, my friend Sanja Ivkov and I had three performances this summer in Belgrade basically within one week (of which two were in the same venue). Having just one mic plugged into a Korg Electribe SX groovebox was again a surprise to some but the combination worked just fine and at least in my humble opinion we've managed to deliver quite decent performances, combining somewhat tribal percussion-based sound with energetic vocals.

It worked especially well on the main event at 6th of September, since the venue (club Fest in Zemun, across the river from downtown Belgrade) had a massive soundsystem considering the size of the place - and also a big support from the numerous crowd who came to see the show that also featured amazing Tearpalm with Crocodile Tears and foreign guests Hippy Death Suite (Belgium) and E.U.E.R.P.I. from Bulgaria, with whom Sanja and I did one impro track on the spot. Visual support was provided by Marina Rajić who also does pretty much all the VJ-ing for frequent Tearpalm performances. The two other events that were centered around the one I've mentioned before were held in Panicroom Žica, where we got this nice spontaneous shot from:

7 August 2012

The track itself was almost entirely finished back in December of 2011 as a test for using Yamaha DX7 IID for the Rhodes electric piano and bass sounds, played by hand and then sequenced alongside everything else in Ableton Live 7. Dug it out many months later, added just a few more bits here and there, found some interesting footage to fit the theme and here it is now, hope you'll enjoy.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a fan of hunting, much less safaris. Same goes for colonialism.

8 April 2012

On March 17th I flew all the way to Moscow to perform at AUX event, in Russia's leading underground techno club Arma17. I've been invited a month prior to the evening by Nikita and Sergey from do/nothing - a small but very active organization with general taste in music not too much unlike that of our own Asino Elettronico label. Before going into anything else, I really need to address the way they handled the whole thing - with perfect professionalism and sincere hospitality.

Due to flight schedule I couldn't see much of the city, which is a big shame since it's absolutely fascinating in many ways, but the whole experience at Arma17, which is amazing in it's own right, was so overwhelmingly positive that I simply couldn't ask for anything more. The audience and all the people there also seemed really friendly and in good mood, simply there wasn't a way anything could go wrong.

I've also had the privilege of being in company of Andrés Marcos Revellado and Patrick Walker (Forward Strategy Group), who are not only great performers but really friendly and fun people to spend time with. Speaking of time, it has probably been the only possible negative factor to the whole experience. As I've mentioned earlier, we didn't have much of it to explore the city, but then again we also had to be awake and fully concentrated until our performances, which were due at very early hours of the next day (me starting at 4:30, Andrés at 5:30 and Patrick at around 5:00 in another room).

When it comes to the technical side of things, I went on a plane carrying nothing but a slightly bigger laptop bag with my recently bought Korg ESX inside. That came as a surprise to most of the people, whose setup was based always around a laptop.

The performance itself went quite well, I believe, almost without a glitch. Having only one groovebox might seem like a quite minimal choice, but I think it works out in a club pretty good. Still there are more possibilities to explore with it alone, I don't think I'll be needing anything else for a while.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures from the evening, but you can find quite a few here:

You won't see much of me (and half of other performers for that matter), but it's sufficient to get an idea of the great atmosphere over there.

The good news is that I have a pretty decent recording of the performance, straight from the mixer. That means I will quite probably release it as a live album - something what I have really wanted to do since I had started doing live shows. Stay tuned for that one.